Can Volunteers Run a Business/Nonprofit Profile?

[ndefilippis]

I'm the parish secretary at my church, which basically means I'm a volunteer. I'm not employed there nor do I file the tax documents. When I set up our business profile, it asked for my personal information (such as SSN) as well as the church EIN. My question is two parts:

1. Will this PayPal account be attached to me come tax season (will I end up getting audited because the IRS thinks I own a business)? Or will all information here be attached to the EIN, and not my personal SSN?

2. PayPal is (or was) asking me to verify my SSN by submitting documentation containing both my SSN and address, and they said it had to match the address on the account (business address). Obviously that isn't possible. What should I do?

[sharpiemarker · Accepted solution]

@ndefilippis 

Okay...PayPal lets you add multiple addresses and indicate which is the home (personal) address and business address, if different.
(Or choose one address as both home and business address if applicable.)

https://www.paypal.com/businessprofile/settings/addresses

This way you can provide Proof of SSN and Proof of Address as account holder the way PayPal wants.

Enter church EIN and if your SSN ends up on the 1099-K, call number in the form when issued next year to correct it. But PayPal should use the EIN.

If you no longer volunteer at the church, download all account activity/data for the church’s records, then close the account and get the new parish secretary to open a new account. It’s faster this way than submitting a change of account holder.

You may add users to handle certain tasks:

How do I add users to my PayPal account?